Sew many geckos

Today Alena and I decided to haul out the old singer sewing machine that was stored in my grandpas shed inside, hoping to clean it up and get it working. the last thing i wanted was for a beautiful antique and family heirloom to slowly deteriorate for no good reason, especially if we could get it working agian.

but when we opened the drawers, we discovered that geckos had been living inside of it.

by the looks of it, multiple generations of geckos were raised here (we found at least 2 dozen hatched eggs were in that drawer). Unfortunately, only two of the geckos were still occupying the singer.

I only got a picture of one of them though. The geckos were re-released outside, and the singer was released in my sisters bedroom. Lets hope that the geckos stay warm and fed, and that i can get that sewing machine singing again.

-Asia

New years eve at the park

since most of my family has left for a church trip in Tennessee, and i haven’t made any new friends yet, so Alena and i decided to go to the bogue chitto state park. Here are some pictures I took

I made sure to throw in a pic of the both of us together (im on the right, Alena is on the left)

woops this one is upside down (I’m to lazy to fix it)

we found a baby tree, we made sure to put it in a sunny spot with soft soil.

I hope you guys enjoy your new years, thanks for reading

Christmas at my grandmas house

we showed up a few hours early so i thought i would take some pictures of what the area around my grandmas house looked like (i just realized that i completely forgot to take pictures of her house)

Here are some pictures of the giant magnolia tree in the back yard that I’ve climbed since i was little

In fact, we still climb it, Here is a pic of Alena (my sister) as proof

My grandmother also has a pond, you just have to walk a bit to get to it.

Legend has it that this pond was created by a meteor. you have to climb down a sharp incline and through a dense congregation of trees to get to it.

here are some pics of the trail around the pond

Here are the rest of the pics that i took

One small step for my education, one giant leap for a small town college student

Two weeks ago, me and my family loaded up our cars, and left a small navy town for an even smaller mill town, nine hours away. This was a trip that we had taken hundreds of times before, but this time me and my sister didn’t drive back. We had Moved out of our parents house and into our grandfathers house all so that we could attend South Eastern Louisiana university. Unfortunately i left a lot of good friends back in Georgia, so I’m going to try to use this blog to document all the adventures that i have so that they can know what I’m up to if their curious

Hope you guys enjoy it

-Asia

dscn3150.jpg

look at this awesome spider? the spider was on my elbow when the picture was taken

let the adventure bee-gin

    I Hate the public school system. I wouldn’t touch it with a ten foot pole, Which is why i decided not to long ago that i didn’t want to be a history teacher. Instead of following my love for stories about how nations rose and fell, how inventions came into existence and how the figures we love lived, i decided to instead follow my love for nature. The thought of having a job that involved protecting forest and parks filled me with excitement, so i thought “ I’ll be an ecologist”. But the more i thought about what this job would entail, the more i thought about the part of nature that has always held my heart. I’m talking about the creepy crawlies, Insects, spiders, and the like. So the next idea my brain clung to was: I’ll double major! ecology and entomology, specializing in bees!

    for the first few months this kind of felt like a cop out. The words spewed out of my mouth, very neat and well crafted every time someone asked what it is that i wanted to do, but it just felt like words to me. That all changed about a week ago. I made an account on this website called bumblebeewatch.org this website was created to gather information on the location of bumble bees across the world using your average everyday bug enthusiast as the lackeys. So like a good lackey i made an account and headed out with my camera to find bumble bees. What happened next? I fell in love. finding the bumble bees, getting pictures, then finding out what type of bee it was is a whole lot of fun. But I’ve decided to take this a little more seriously, i want to find out about all of the native bees, not just the bumble bees. I’m going to be heading off into wooded areas with a camera, notebook, pen, sketchbook, and container for plant samples. Ill make sure to keep you guys updated on my adventures.

the picture above is a common eastern bumble bee i found in my neighborhood

the truth about sketchbooks

           we all know what a sketchbook is right? something filed with blank or previously blank pages, spiral bound or held together with glue, and it usually invites random strangers to pick it up, flip through it and say things like

    “did you draw that?”

or
    “this guy is missing an arm”

All and all the sketchbook is a pretty non-threatening object. But time and time again you end up staring down at that page frozen, and unable to move. You’re not afraid of the sketchbook, that would be ridiculous, you’re afraid of failure. Nothing is more disheartening than having all these cool ideas but they don’t turn out right, or your inspiration leaves you as soon as you open your sketchbook. The only advice i can give you is don’t be afraid, its ok to make mistakes. Your sketchbook is not meant to be a masterpiece, so don’t treat it so seriously. Your sketchbook is your playground, a place for you to experiment, or goof off. Draw what ever the hell you want, with whatever the hell you want, with whatever colors you want. If somebody doesn’t like it, who cares? they aren’t the ones who paid seven dollars for it at walmart, they probably don’t even have the 64 crayon box with the sharpener. And remember, failure is always an option, in fact, as an artist you should welcome mistake, the more mistakes you make the better you get at fixing them. You think the great artist of history are great because the never messed up? no they’re great because they worked with they’re mistakes.

    If you draw or want to draw and you don’t have a sketchbook, i suggest you go get yourself one. Everybody needs a space of their own, especially people who are still trying to figure out what their styles are. Oh, i forgot to mention, sense your sketchbook is your own creative space, you can put whatever you want in it, doesn’t have to be just drawings. You can put grocery list, poems, thoughts that you want to come back to later, quotes, and whatever else strikes your fancy. So scribble away my friends. Carpe Charta!

 

Thank you for reading

Im sorry if that was bad Latin, feel free to correct me

join me next time for ideas for conquering blocks of the writing and art varieties

child of the light

i had tried to paint an elf but had messed up (you can still see the big red X i pasted across his face when i gave up) instead of leaving it there, i slapped more paint over it and added a healthy dose of pen scribbles. I kind of like how it turned out. I am slowly but surely conquering my fear of watercolors

my fair lady

just messing around with some water colors

Bee free

    Today i went up to the college to talk to financial aid. On my way to the office i spotted a honey bee trying to fly past the impenetrable force field that was the window. I knew that the little lady had places to be and would die if i left her there so I thought about what i had on me that i could use to capture the bee. Half eaten banana? nope. Ipod? nope. western novel? nope. Nothing else in my purse would be any help either, so i put all my stuff down, walked to the front office and asked if they had any cups. Of Course they wanted to know why this chick was barging in asking for cups so i had to tell them about the bee. This is the part that bothers me, The lady at the desk looked at me with a bored expression and said

“can’t you just spray it?”

Why in the world would i go through the effort of trying to put it outside if i wanted it dead? And why do so many people respond to these situations with “kill it”?

    anyways the culinary teacher was in the room when i told the lady at the front desk, and went to his classroom to fetch me two cups, (what a cool guy)And i got to watch the bee fly up up and away. I hope it made it home ok.

Thanks for reading

And remember that widows are in fact solid objects